Thoughts on Cuba

First, you have to read what Lower Manhattanite of the Group News Blog said. The short form is, that that the US is in the position of a stalking ex-boyfriend. To true.

Then we have Ben Sargant's editorial cartoon:


Hoisted from Brad Delong's comments, it's an excellent historical perspective:

And I think he knows that he has fallen short and is pained by that. And to have his life evaluated by a moral midget like George Bush and his ilk must gall him.
Having said that, the real decision on Castro will be made by the Cuban people and above all I wish them as much freedom as possible to do this. Freedom from their own government trying to hold on to power the old way even if that is no longer appropriate. But even more, freedom from those in our country would be willing to slaughter large numbers of Cubans and destroy what good Cuba has created over these past.

Whatever Castro has been, the Cuban people have paid a high price and achieved genuine social development. The worst tragedy would be for this to be taken from them in a wave of Thatcher-Reagan-Yeltsin privatization combined with America bringing "freedom" to Cuba the way we have brought it to Iraq.

(emphasis mine)

Finally, I have a thought on why the Cubans are way more batsh%$ insane 50 years after Castro left than, for example, my Estonian acquaintance was about the USSR and Estonia 40 years after Stalin invaded:

It's more than that with the emigres.

You have to understand that Cuba has a heritage of Spanish rule.

For 300 years, when the British Crown got too autocratic, the refrain was, "This isn't Spain".

Spain bought into divine right big time, and it got passed down from the Spanish crown to the despotic successors of the crown.

A coup was OK, because that was just the man at the top changing, but Castro, he broke up the estates, and gave them to the peons, some of whom were n***ers (IIRC, Cuba is now majority Afro-Cuban).

That is an affront to God, and cannot be tolerated.